According to a recent rumor, Trajan Langdon, the newly appointed President of Basketball Operations of the Detroit Pistons, may soon fire the team’s head coach if he feels that something needs to change.
The Detroit Pistons’ offseason is shaping up to be very interesting. Having concluded the NBA season with the poorest overall record (14-68), the team possesses the means to quickly reassemble its roster and resume its status as a competitive squad for the upcoming season.
More importantly, the team has the most cap space in the league, which they can use to either sign big-name free agents or make blockbuster trades. The franchise has the fifth overall choice in the 2024 NBA Draft. Langdon will be given favorable circumstances and receive a lot of the team’s credit for their ability to rapidly turn things around.
It appears, though, that there are other aspects of the team that might undergo significant change in the summer. Major consequences from the announcement that Detroit hired the former general manager of the New Orleans Pelicans were disclosed by NBA insiders James L. Edwards III and Shams Charania in an article published in The Athletic.
The site stated that upon hiring Langdon, “he will have the final say on all basketball decisions, as well as the option to move on from both head coach Monty Williams and general manager Troy Weaver, who signed a massive six-year, $76 million contract (with incentives) last summer.”
It would appear that Williams’ enormous contract balance and the fact that, up until last season, he was regarded as a fairly competent coach would be more than enough to prevent him from being fired. Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores would, according to sources, “eat the rest of the money if the new president of basketball operations decides he wants to bring in someone else to walk the sidelines,” the reporters of The Athletic stated.
It’s said that Langdon plans to make a decision shortly on the hiring of a new general manager or head coach.